


Burrowing Wasps

by hedgerowhag



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (further warnings in the notes), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Animal Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, featuring: british modern gothic, like wuthering heights but with microwave rice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14680347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgerowhag/pseuds/hedgerowhag
Summary: That’s fine. Really, it’s fine. Hux has enough savings and inheritance from his father to get by just fine until a new opportunity arises. This break is rather useful; it gives him the time to drive north and clear out his father’s house. Finally, put it on the market after losing all assistance in maintaining it.--Hux returns to his childhood home on a secluded countryside road, hoping to end his ties there and leaving the neighbourhood for good.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from 'between the acts' by virginia woolf. kinda has nothing to do w the story but meh  
> ive been writing this fic for months and i dont expect it to be exceptionally popular but i hope that those who do read it enjoy it
> 
>  
> 
> WARNING (spoilers): animal death, animal corpses (birds, a cat, mentions of a dog), sum dead beetles, hallucinations, supernatural activity, physical violence (nothing graphic), child negligence

_Sleep, my fathers, in your graves,_

_On upland bogland under heather;_

_What the wind scatters the wind saves._

 

\- Louis MacNeice, 'XXIV' in Autumn Journal

 

* * *

 

 

The kitchen tap rattled as it coughed out the last gushes of hot water. The denim in Armitage’s red hands felt like burlap as he scrubbed it with a brush from the cupboard under the kitchen sink. The bristles skipped onto his fingers, tearing his knuckles and scratching nails. His arms hurt, braced on the metal rim of the sink. The armpits of his green sweater were soaked with suds of cold water.

The clay had clogged the denim and, as he scraped with the black bent bristles, the fabric became grey. Armitage grunted, scratched the material with his red-purple fingers until they slipped off. His elbow slammed into the sink rim. Water splashed, pouring onto Armitage’s blue-pink socks with mucked soles.

The boy groaned, stepping back as the water continued to dribble out onto the beige tiled floor from the counter. He didn’t realise the ruined jeans were still in his hand until they slopped out of the sink, pouring more water onto the floor.

Armitage rushed to stuff the dirty clothing back into the kitchen sink, slamming his bare, scabbed knees into the cupboard doors. Besides socks and underwear, the boy was only wearing a t-shirt underneath the washed-out sweater that swung mid-thigh. The sleeves were caked with crusted snot that softened as he scrubbed the muddy jeans.

He had worn them because they were new. Armitage thought that maybe Ben would stop asking him from which bin he got his clothes this time. He didn’t think they would go to the river that cut under the road coming from the town to the moors. The rains had flooded the bank and the pastures became a waterlogged mess of clay and glooping shit.

Armitage had stood on the edge that drooped into the current under the shadow of the bridge carrying the road over the river. Without the sky’s glare, he could watch the fish swim under the hanging grass. His rubber boots were slipping on the mud and the water seeped through the cracked soles.

Armitage thought he saw a crawfish, hobbling on the black rocks. He tried to lean closer when small hands shoved him in the back. He blanched and stumbled into the brink of the river, but caught himself, taking several steps back. Armitage turned to Ben who was doing his _American_ snigger. Armitage tried to replicate it, but only ended up sounding like himself.

Ben stood there with his wormy lips pulled into a satisfied grin, bundled in a thick blue coat with a fur collar, black waterproof pants and brown leather boots with thick soles that he would grow out of in a week. He was still sniggering when Armitage charged toward him in slippery rubber boots that flung pieces of grass and slopping clay behind him. Just before he reached Ben, Armitage tipped over.

With filthy knees and chest, Armitage lunged for Ben, wrestling him onto the ground. The fight found him on his front with boots sucked into a well of mud. He had fallen, submerging with his knees dragging through the mess. His chin was covered in dirt and hands filled with clay globs.

Armitage tried to reach out, grab for Ben, but the other boy tottered out of the way, laughing, and sprinted from the mud pit underneath the slope of road. Armitage watched Ben run through the sparse heather, kicking up dry the flowers as he passed over the hill toward the copse where the line of cottages and houses grew. Armitage bit his lip, trying to hinder its shaking and the bubbling whine tightening his throat.

The day was dark when Armitage climbed from pit of watery clay. He considered staying there, partially submerged, until summer came, and the earth dried around him. But nobody likes self-pity, so he forced himself out. Hot tears blurred his eyes as he clawed the grass.

It was a slow trek back through the grey heather dusted fields. Armitage climbed the drystone walls, shivering when the wind from the valleys came onto the moor and shook him in the stone foot perches. Armitage looked up at the row of tree fenced houses, stretching away from the tarmac road and the wind tamed cottages. He continued to walk.

On the rise of the hill, the old woody heather stuttered against a line of garden fences flanked by shadows of poplars that swaying in unison like cat tails in the evening wind. Armitage’s rigid figure hunched against the blows as he clawed the gate’s catch that led into the garden of his father’s house. His hands kept slipping on the coil fixture. Tears were bubbling down his red cheeks by the time he ran through the lichen coated gate.

Rusting garden table and chairs, preoccupied by bird shit and scavenging insects in leaves; a pond that has nothing living but the blooming algae and reeds that are clustered like something rotten clawing through the ground; faceless animal figures in the brambles; a deflated football – bitten by a dog that was no longer there.

Armitage shoved through the backdoor of the house using the key underneath the blue paper waste wheelie bin. He kicked off his rubber boots in the hallway, mucking the rug with footprints, and ran into the kitchen in damp socks. Armitage clawed off his jeans and shoved them into the sink, turning the hot water tap on before grabbing for the washing up liquid and pooling it onto the fabric.

If mum came home early, she would find him in the kitchen, with snot down to his lips. She would take the rag from the sink and throw it in the bin. Saying nothing. She would be too tired and wouldn’t help him cleaning the ruined hallway.

Socks slip on the dirt smudged floor, gathering the puddles on their drooping toes as Armitage scrubbed. He was biting his lip, wheezing into the collar of his dirty sweater.

A slam on the glass of the kitchen window reeled Armitage from the sink. He slipped and fell back against the table, tripping on the chairs and collapsing on the floor.

There was a smudge on the glass – a print of wings. Like a snowball that was flung before sliding down in a smear of sludge.

Armitage struck up onto his feet, ignoring the collapsed chair as he ran out into the back garden. His ruined socks soaked the dirty water from the moss overgrowing on the flagstone patio.

Under the window, in a cloud of feather, twitched the clump of a blackbird. The creature was throwing its head forward like it wanted to move, but there was no strength in its attempts. It tried to stand, but collapsed, turning over onto its back. The bird’s feet clenched, its beak opened, making strange high-pitched noises.

Armitage whimpered, screwing up his face in a grimace. He edged toward the bird, hands twisting the hem of his sweater. He squatted down beside the flinching thing. It didn’t react to him. The feathers were puffed up, beak gaping like it couldn’t take air.

He didn’t want to touch it. He wanted to leave it, for the cats or the foxes to take it. But it felt cruel.

Armitage reached forward and pressed two fingers into the space of the bird’s neck. It started convulsing, heartbeat showing against its black coated chest. Armitage pressed harder, wincing at the squeaking noises as the bird heaved. The pressure came away under his hand.

The boy was shivering. He snatched his hand back and pulled his sweater over his bare knees to the ankles. He didn’t notice he was crying again.

 

 

After fifteen years the vague rancid smell of milk has not left the fridge. It had settled into the cracks of the yellowed plastic, clinging to whatever is left inside. Hux sniffs, coughs, and shoves the microwave dinners onto the shelves. There are thin plastic bags of fruit and vegetables in case there is a moment of drunk inspiration.

Closing the fridge and wrapping the shopping bag around his fist to throw it in the bin, Hux realises he will inevitably make the same mistake as his mum which led to the putrefied milk. He thinks he will somehow have the energy to use something other than the microwave.

Sneezing from the dust lifting off the kitchen furniture, Hux takes a beer from the pack he left on the table. He twists off the cap with the edge of his stretched-out university hoodie and licks the foam from the rim.

Drinking the beer that wasn’t his choice, Hux walks into the living room. Without sheets to cover the furniture, or Rae’s visits, it has become grown fur of dust. Hux hasn’t taken his shoes off yet. But maybe he should; he isn’t in a better state than the house.

With a grimace, he slurps the beer and watches chunks of dust float from the curtains. In the front garden, the rose bushes have impeded on the spindle trees and the privet hedges have grown to seven feet, at least. The overshadowed flowerbeds have become brown clumps and the poplar leaves have been left unraked for three summers.

Hux takes another gulp of beer and looks down at the vacuum thrown out in the doorway. He hasn’t even made it upstairs yet and thee bags are in the front hallway. The moment he came through the door he marched to the wall closet set in the juncture between the living room and the kitchen and grabbed for the vacuum. The valiant thought quickly died when the old machine sputtered out and Hux realised he was too sober for another effort. So, instead, he unloaded the shopping bags from the car and resorted to beer he hasn’t drank since university.

Finding a bent metal dustpan and brush from the back of the utility closet, Hux sets down his beer on the barren mantlepiece and approaches the sofa. Using the brush and damp paper towels, he scrapes the aged brown corduroy of dust, loading it onto the pan.

Between the trips from the sofa to the bin, Hux’s mind sluggishly drains toward his office at PACE headquarters. _His_ office. It should be _his_ office. But as of the notice two and a half weeks ago, he has been kindly sent away from his esteemed position. There was even a “sorry we let you go” office potted plant.

That’s fine. Really, it’s fine. Hux has enough savings and inheritance from his father to get by just fine until a new opportunity arises. This break is rather useful; it gives him the time to drive north and clear out his father’s house. Finally, put it on the market after losing all assistance in maintaining it. The late 19th century building will be unlikely to withstand another winter without renovation.

Hux rocks on the toes of his shoes and buckles forward on his haunches, thumping his forehead on the stiff seat cushions of the sofa. He has toppled from designing the most elite aerospace crafts to scraping filth from a thirty-odd year-old sofa in clothes he has owned for a decade.

Moaning into the corduroy, Hux lifts up and drops the dustpan onto the floor. He walks toward the kitchen, picking the beer from the mantlepiece, and heads to the backdoor.

It has been raining through the evening and the sky is hazy with the autumn dark. A strip of amber sits between the fold of grey-blue clouds, simmering like cooling gold on stone. Hux walks through the rear garden amid the overgrown brambles and nettles as the tall, rod thin poplars swing, shaking rainwater down onto the yellowing grass.

Faint birdcalls come from the hedges of a neighbour’s garden over the timber wall. The ungroomed masses of balding bushes scratch and creak. The fence at the bottom of the garden has partially collapsed after rotting in the knee-high grass, but the bolt is still holding the gate closed.

The timber is soft and damp under Hux’s hand as he leans against it. The pastures below the copse are dusky blue static that falls into the valley of estuaries that is overgrown by dark pools of heather, patched by the pale scars of the muirburn. The borders of the heather have been pushed further from the houses, once having grown against the fences, sprouting root in the flower beds. But the hills falling into the haze of the evening, divided by valleys, remain undisrupted by roads.

The clouds clot, darkening without notice as the moors drown in a dreaming daze. Setting the bottle on a timber post, Hux twists his hands into the sleeves of his hoodie and bunches his shoulders to his ears.

An engine sounds from the blind alley, gaining volume. Hux hears the wheels skid on the loose gravel. He hasn’t made effort to see any of the neighbours since his six-hour drive. But the hedges dividing the houses have been allowed to grow out for a reason besides sheltering the rotting structures from the oncoming winds from the moorlands.

Hux yawns into the collar of his hoodie, listening to the engine rattle down the main road, cutting toward the town. He drinks the rest of the beer while watching the ghosts of sheep drifting on the pastures. It’s early, despite the dark, but Hux has no interest in being conscious much longer.

Unravelling a bare duvet from his bags and squashed pillow, Hux drags his shoes off and falls onto the corduroy sofa. His head is jammed against the armrest as he breathes into the folds of the duvet, smelling like the coffee of motorway stops and the beer stains on his hoodie.

 

 

Dust falls in ribbons down the staircase. The muted sound of tap spitting water into a ceramic sink comes through the jarred bathroom door. The light hasn’t been switched on.

Hux is washing black silt from a yellow rag, forcing down his gagging as he rinses out crushed pieces of beetle and spider. He is trying his best not to touch the rag, but, then and again, a piece of something catches on the bowl of the sink and he must help it toward the drain.

It's Sunday. Hux woke up before any reasonable shop pulls up its shutters and resolved to pick up a plastic bucket of soapy water and scrub by hand. On his knees, with an empty stomach and a rancid taste in his mouth, Hux crawled up the stairs, scraping the years of dust from the cracks until he climbed onto the landing.

His eyes dropped in and out of focus when he stood. He moved blind as he reached up to the window sill that dripped morning light onto the stairs almost a foot above his sight. He swiped the yellow rag across the sill and felt pellets patter onto his head.

Reeling, Hux felt them roll off his hair and into the hood of his sweater. He isn’t squeamish, but when he saw the curled fragments of moths and beetles on the landing between his feet, soot dotted his vision.

Gathering himself, Hux unfolded the filthy yellow rag in his hands, scooped insect pellets into it and then dumped them into the half empty plastic bucket of water. He still feels the spider legs itching inside his hoodie as he washes out the rag and empties the bucket into the toilet.

Folding the yellow fabric and pinching it around his fingers, Hux heads to the window sill. Standing on his toes, he reaches up and swipes the rag across – unseeing. He scrapes away several layers of tacky dirt and washes it out in the sink. Returning, Hux repeats the action and pushes his hands toward the window.

Something bumps on Hux’s fingers. He swallows and scoops it into the rag, edging it toward him. A flop on the floor and Hux stumbles back. Between his feet, there is a sparrow. It’s shrunk underneath the sporadic feathers – the eyes hollow and the legs pinched toward the concave belly.

“Oh, fucking—” Hux shudders, but kneels over the bird and wraps it into the discoloured rag.

With the bucket in one hand and the bird in the other, Hux walks down stairs as quickly as he is able and steers toward the backdoor. Having kept it unlocked, he only needs to push before he can dump the bundled bird onto the flagstones and tip the water that is far too filthy even for the toilet into the drain under the kitchen window.

Hux watches the water pour, a stream of yellow-grey thick with dust, and spatter from the drain onto his shoes. He does not see the insects – only knotted hairs and clumped dust. To think how long those creatures were lying there, it’s not surprising their hollowed bodies turned to dust the moment they touched water.

Hux takes the empty bucket and grabs the swaddling of yellow, throwing it in a bin lined by the backdoor.

 

The upstairs rooms, Hux discovers, are an empty cause. He turned the handle of what used to be his room and pushed through the door but didn’t make a step inside. The dust thick air hit him, and he wheezed, spitting out the dry cud in his throat. It took him minutes of breathing into his palms before he was able to open his eyes and move from the doorway into the bathroom where he drank water from the tap. The chlorine burned his throat, making him cough harder. But he keeps drinking.

With his head tipped to the side and the water running between his lips, Hux felt a pressing ache rolling across his skull. He shifted on his feet without realising. The water runs into his nose and the vertigo becomes unbearable.

Downstairs, on the step of the backdoor, Hux eats cereal bars out of the box, building a pile of yogurt-sticky wrappers on the moss as he watches the overgrown grass bend with the wind. Without anyone to see him, he pulls his hoodie over his knees on which he puts his chin as he eats.

The headache begins to ease off and he forces himself upstairs to the yellow-bellied bath with the creaking showerhead. He tastes rust in the water as he stands below it and scrubs his hair with a bar of soap.

Dressed in fresh clothes, a goose feather coat that reaches his thighs, and thick leather boots, Hux leaves the house. His dated black Mercedes is parked in front of the garage, tilted onto the grass from the gravel path leading from the street. Hux glances to the slanted shutter of the garage, twisting his fingers in his keys. He winces.

Turning away, Hux unlocks his car and gets inside. He backs out through the open gate and onto the gravel street, hanging half out of the window to watch the car’s rear swerve past the neighbour’s hedges and dividing red brick walls.

The house at the end of the blind alley has been empty since Rae left for the south for her treatment. An issue with the electrics and some minor flooding has frightened off buyers. They must’ve also noticed the mould in the corners of the rooms, the crumbling ceiling, bowing walls. Hux hadn’t been aware of these issues until he came back from the university. The fresh walled campus had put the country houses in perspective.

This remains to be the same story for the rest of the properties which have not been sold by grandchildren after the owners passed – much of whom Hux knew since they came here for retirement.

The car rolls down the broken tarmac and gravel, gathering cold wind as Hux closes the window. The birch and willows have overgrown, shading the street. More poplars have started to peek over the walls. A gate has changed, painted dark brown with golden ‘473’ drilled in. The Solo house has lost its blue on the windowpanes and the low timber fence. Ivy has over spilled on a wall, providing a climbing purchase for cats. Hux turns onto the main road.

Cottages stand against the torrents ascending the moors that shake the cars as they pass between the open land and the town. Their fences and gardens are bent in toward the ground, shrunk from the wind and the horizon. Here at least, nothing has changed.

The car rocks like its carried by sea. The inside smells of an eight-hour coffee fuelled drive to Peak District. Somehow, Hux feels clearer.

 

The town’s plaza is flanked by a historic church and war monuments, leaning in for the attention of the passers-by. But the local community centres itself in Marks & Spencer and the newly emerged Costa that promptly became conquered by the elderly and bored. Bicycle loaded cars pass through the square, heading down the roads that leads past a primary school and dated, cramped houses build for the miners before exiting out onto the hedgerow enclosed pastures.

In the Co-op, Hux has resorted to a shopping basket that is dragged along the floor on wheels as he packs it with cleaning supplies and instant coffee. His mind is dawdling with remaining sleep as he tries to remember the significance of fabric softener, when the shop door slams against the wall like it’s a vintage Western.

Voices enter in a gaggle. The door keeps battering open as more voice pile inside. Hux can’t quite see over the shelves to assess and decides to keep out of the way, retreating further into the shop where he is confronted by stacked creates of fresh produce.

The voices are wafting closer. Too close to ignore. Hux looks up from the mounted blockade of iceberg lettuce to see a group of tall men in mud sprayed outdoor clothing picking through the snack aisle. Their faces are dotted by filth in the shape of helmet visors and necks are speckled like they are covered in fur. Hux can smell the sweat coming off them as they grab chocolate like high school girls.

Hux edges to move from them into the chilled drinks aisle and stare at the best-before dates when a hand reaches across his vision. The dirt cracked knuckles wrap around a chocolate Friji milkshake.

“’scuse me,” mumbles a voice, so close Hux reels.

“Excuse _yourself,_ ” spits Hux and quickly steers away in the small shop.

There is a laugh. “Who pissed in your fucking cornflakes today.”

Hux’s shoes squeak on the floor. He turns, almost ramming his shopping basket into a stack of canned food on the corner of an aisle. He failed to hear the American accent on the first go. It catches him like cold wire.

In steel toe capped boots, mud caked black trousers and a tight thermal shirt, is unmistakably the same worm-lipped face with hair like a girl’s in messy streaks of uncombed black. What used to be relatively small hands meant for grabbing pebbles out of the river to throw at Hux or the penny chocolates out of pockets, have become wide rough palms with work-worn fingers that are hogging three bags of Maltesers, Doritos and Lucozade.

“Armitage?” The brown-eyed moron straightens up, smiling.

Hux blanches and quickly wheels his basket toward the checkout. Despite the effort, he hears the stomp of boots gaining behind him.

“Hey— Back in the old country?” Ben’s American voice with its American hum-drum grains Hux’s cranium. “How come I didn’t hear about this? You’re staying at your house, right?” Ben persists, swinging out his legs to match Hux pace for pace.

“A complication,” Hux grunted, shoving into the cue. “There wasn’t anyone I cared to inform.”

“What? Suddenly decided to take a vacation from the busy city?”

Hux feels his ears twitch every time the plastic in Ben’s arms crinkles. “I don’t think that is your concern.”

The line catches up to Hux and he swings his basket onto the counter. His plan for a quick escape after the bags are packed becomes stumped when Hux pats down his pockets which results in a frantic double search.

Hux tightens his lips to make a very sober, restrained apology when a hand in crusted dirt reaches out and slaps down a credit on the contactless reader.

Hux turns and stares at Ben as the reader chirps. Then, he grabs the receipt from the cashier, hauls the bags against his chest and swerves out of the automatic doors before they have been able to open completely.

The empty spaces for which Hux specifically chose the cark park outside of a souvenir shop have become occupied by two large, boxy vans painted various tones of black with purple and red flames. The van on the right of Hux’s dusty Mercedes sports bubble-eyed monsters drawn in white spray paint with twisted horns and outstretched claws. The other is covered in silver clouds and lightning bolts.

“So, are you staying at your old man’s house or nah?”

Hux flinches around, the bags in his arms squeaking as he grips them.

“I didn’t see you on the street or anything,” Ben pants, clumping a receipt in his fist as he tries to balance the packets in his arms. “Visiting Rae?”

“Well, I did plan on seeing myself to the graveyard,” Hux replies, watching Ben’s gaggle of filthy morons emerge from the Co-op and saunter toward the vans.

“Oh— _Shit_.” Hux thinks he sees Ben cringe under all that hair. “I didn’t know.”

“I suppose that is what happens when you are not in contact with someone for fourteen years.”

Having recovered, Ben tries to open the fizzy drink held at his elbow with one hand. “Yeah. I figured. You could’ve added me on Facebook or some shit.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Doesn’t matter—I don’t use that shit anymore anyway.”

A van door slams behind Hux as he turns to see the shapes of dirt bikes and scraped helmets on hooks disappear behind mud sprayed glass.

The bottle is still unopened when Hux returns his attention to Ben. He notices that his arms are shaking, like he is shivering. It’s causing Ben’s jaw to clench, and hands wrap weakly around the sealed orange cap.

“Perhaps you should have considered a _coat_ ,” scoffs Hux and winces when he hears the bottle crack and hiss.

Ben catches the foam on his hand when he lifts the bottle from his elbow. “Sugar crash,” he explains. “It’s fucking cold on the hills though.”

The American accent has only grown thicker. Ben still knows how to play the part in the way he dresses, behaves, but it will always be there in his voice. Leaving for the states at sixteen after he finished high school only flourished the ring of _foreigner_ in his words.

“What the fuck did you forget here?” finally, Hux asks. He forgives himself for losing the distance of formality.

The bottle is half empty when Ben finally releases it. “I’m on the run,” he says.

“From the police?”

“Mom. Same thing.” Ben’s voice becomes muffled by crinkling of the Doritos bag. “You?”

Hux shrugs. “Errands. The property needs to be sold.”

The engine of a van shudders alive, followed by the second. Ben chokes on his half-chewed clump of Doritos.

“Gotta go. Sorry about your dad,” he says, patting Hux on the shoulder with the sticky Lucozade bottle. “See you around.”

The passenger door of the monster sprayed van is held open for Ben as he climbs inside, shaking it as he settles. The vans sputter out of the car park where Hux stands on the curb, watching them fall in line at the traffic lights. The first van pitches back and forth before it touches off at the green light, swerving behind the corner with its twin in tow.

 

 

Dust motes twirl like a puff of smoke as they fall in the dimming light of the overcast evening coming through the window. Hux pulls collar of his turtleneck jumper over his nose as he pushes through the door of his father’s study. He coughs, passing through the threshold, and breathes deep to get his lungs under control.

Something dry, rough, catches in Hux’s throat. His chest spasms and his heaving riles the dust to scatter in the air, triggering the whole room to become a hive of movement.

When the grey-white static of the room settles, Hux is sat against the door with red eyes. He moans when he tries to breathe. He does not want to risk another fit by reaching for the light switch. He stares through the dark as the dust coats the boxes in the study anew, layering the cardboard with feathered clumps of grey. The stacks are overshadowed by the desk and lamp, flanked by identical, empty bookcases.

The green lamp stands like an arm reaching out from the black. Through the gaps of the boxes mounted on the desk Hux sees the blue-grey light hit the tortoise-shell, gold rimmed ashtray. The pen holder is erect like a middle finger beside it. The contents of the bookcases have been handed to colleagues and friends, otherwise sold or donated.

White sparks scatter in Hux’s eyes as he stands, his back sliding up against the door. He moves around the desk toward the window, holding the turtleneck collar over his mouth and nose. The window latch is caked by the grime of dust, sticky with moisture. Hux’s fingers twist red on the metal, pulling against the water distorted window frame. The latch slips out of place and the glass slides up. Hux hangs over the ledge into the open air, wheezing as he stares into the blurring pit of the back garden.

After several moments, he looks over his shoulder past the curtains. The boxes had been packed by his own hands; he recognises the writing and the snagged tape. There is nothing useful inside. Just clothes that have the smell of an old man losing control of his bladder, diaries of appointments written in red pen, awards and diplomas of dubious nature.

It’s not sentiment that has made Hux keep these boxes for twelve years. It’s just that it is easier to convince people that Hux possesses it. It kept the police from doubting him.

Hux approaches a box and rips the tape off the top. It comes away with a layer of soft cardboard. A new plume of dust rises. Hux unplugs the desk lamp, shoves it inside without coiling the wire, followed by the pen holder, bowl of paper clips, toothpicks and spare glasses. Hux falters on the ashtray, turning it over in his palms, thumbing the golden halfspheres holding the base.

Hux steps from foot to foot, easing the ache on his soles, turning the ashtray like it’s meant to show an image if he does it quickly enough. A soft crack comes from beneath his toes and Hux wobbles from the desk.

He looks down and swears softly. He tips his head toward the ceiling and then glances down again, backing against the window as the curses come louder. His back slams into the radiator.

They never kept a cat. Just a dog, once, that mum brought from a shelter. It got hit when it ran out of the rear garden, down the fields and onto the road. Hux always wanted a cat – something indifferent, but warm and stable. He likes their soft round faces, like they are always smiling to themselves under the fans of whiskers. Hux thinks that, perhaps, is why his eyes are dotted with white sparks as he looks down at the curled, shrunk body of a tabby.

Its lips are pulled up, showing spikes of teeth. The stomach is shrivelled against the ribs, tail curled like a rat’s. A gust comes through the window and shivers the old, matted fur and the clustering of feathers around the feline. The pin-fine bones rattle with Hux’s footsteps on the floorboards.

The study door slams and the dust lifts in a swarm as Hux tears down the staircase. His eyes are sparking between black and white. His head feels tight and empty. He trips on the last step, slams into the wall at the bottom of the staircase and collapses on the rug that slides with him.

Hux’s lips shudder against the coarse hairs of the rug as he heaves, drooling and squirming, ears pounding with his heartbeat. Moments pass, nothing feels better.

Pulling his knees underneath himself, Hux stands with his palms against the wall. He breathes through the nausea as he walks through the hallway on buckling legs. The evening light has simmered into nothing and he batters his hands against the front door’s handle until he realises it is locked and struggles for the key.

The cold air douses Hux with relief. He does not close the door as he hobbles up the flagstone path to the gate. The metal is bowed, held by a rusted mechanism that scratches Hux’s thigh as he leans against the frame, scraping his elbows on the narrow panel of metal.

The collar of Hux’s turtleneck is sticking to his chin, with spit, tears and mucus. He coughs into his hand and rubs his eyes, feeling an ache rise and fall in his chest. The dullness of the light on the street makes Hux wince as he tries to line the details. There are no streetlamps, just what manages to fall between the houses and the poplar trees from the disappearing sun.

A garage door slams down the street, toward the exit onto the open road. Hux opens the creaking gate, grating rusted metal on the broken humps of tarmac.

The Solo house has not remained without change. The polished front garden with its military stripes of grass and the arrangement of flowers around the rectangle lawn have grown wild. The apple tree is bald and knobby, curving out at the centre of the suffocated attempt at order. But the bird feeders have not been left empty.

The timber gate gives and oiled clack as Hux takes the stepping-stone path to the front door. The windchimes are gone, but the hooks remain embedded in the overhang. The ribbons on the rowan shrub at the door are ripped and sun bleached.

Hux raps on the door in a quick succession, stepping back once he is satisfied with the number of taps.

It’s quiet. A sensation of intrusion pushes against Hux’s throat. Only a second has passed and his skin is buzzing. Two fucking seconds and he wants to lift his hand again.

Three—

The hallway light floods the glass panels of the door. The lock clicks and the handle turns. The door pulls back.

“Yea’?” Ben asks in a voice so sore it’s as though he has been breathing the dust with Hux.

“Oh—I apologise. Were you sleeping?” Hux asks, guilty; in a worn through t-shirt, thick sweatpants and drooping socks, Ben looks as though he has crawled from bed. His eyes are refusing to open properly and the hair-tie tethered bundle atop his head is barely holding.

“And?” Ben mumbles and slouches against the doorframe, letting the hallway open behind him. He is letting Hux know his arrival is a nuisance, flippant with impatience.

The sudden change of attitude jolts Hux, reminded of the way it only took one misstep for Ben to snap from a focused student to a sulking imp standing outside of the classroom door. Either it would be someone staring at him for too long, talking over him, or misunderstanding a problem. It would take for Ben to latch onto something, an object or a thought, for him to trot off happily again and sit in the silence of his fascination.

Hux watches Ben’s eyes swerve with disinterest and says, “Nothing. I was wondering if it doesn’t impede too much on your time, maybe you could do me a favour?”

Ben is pouting with his over-full lips, eyes watery with sleep. He looks painfully tired, as though he is pushing through a headache. Hux wants to know what happened in a day; Leia Organa isn’t here to keep Ben boxed in her expectations. School is over, with its frustrations and strings of counsellors. Perhaps it’s just the weather changing, Hux reasons.

“What is it?” Ben grunts, folding and unfolding his arms.

Hux’s jaw unhinges as he grimaces. “I underestimated the state of the house and I was wondering if perhaps— Do you have a functioning vacuum? All I have is water and a mop.”

Ben stares at him, tired eyes drooping, lips pinched thin. He looks barely present.

The claps as the door is slammed into its frame. Hux blanches and looks around himself, at loss of how to respond.

Already three stepping stones down the path, Hux is faltered by the sound of an electric socket cracking against the timber door. The jambs of the frame shudder and the door is swung into an unseen coatrack.

More hair is drooping from the bundled mess on Ben’s head as he holds out an outstretched hand, gripping a vacuum by the handle toward Hux. “Here,” he says in tandem with a skittish glance.

Hux takes the vacuum and grabs the cord when it begins unspooling. “Thank you—I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”

“No problem,” Ben mumbles, closing the door before he even finishes the words.

Hux stumbles back at the sound. He wonders if he should have hindered Ben from going back inside in that state.

 

Feathers fall down the staircase, coloured like mist in the film of the blue light. A strip of black parts the door into the study. Feathers rush out with the breeze. It carries the smell of rot sweetened flesh.

Hux, standing on the steps, watches the door swing gently, as though pulled. It pushes back into the frame. The lock clicks.

 

 

The smoke had left a fog on the sky that morning. It came in blue and ghostly, tinging the swaying poplars with a pallor. The smell hung over Armitage as he drew patterns on the dust of his father’s car. The strings of his raincoat dragged lines as he tipped his head from side to side, flopping his overgrown hair – it started to reach his shoulders.

Armitage listened to a lighter click around the side of the house. Mum inhaled through the cigarette and sighed. A window opened upstairs, releasing the sound of a shredder. It was a Sunday.

Windchimes chattered down the street. A fresh plume of smoke was brought on from the moors. Armitage’s reflection skipped through the puddles that gathered in the dents of the broken tarmac on the street and between the humps of layered patches.

The sound of morning news shuddered on the glass of the Solo house. Jackdaws heckled on the roof. Armitage fumbled with the garden gate closure. The buds of the white roses were heavy again and that year’s tulips were swinging like drumsticks, peaking their colours between the green. Armitage stepped on the stones marking the path through the trimmed grass to the door.

Fabric scraped on earth as calloused hands swiped together, shaking off dirt. Armitage saw Mr. Solo kneeling over the flower beds, wiping a crude brush against the rim of a paint tin before bringing it to the picket fence. The petunia buds were speckled sky-blue as Mr. Solo coloured the timber with quiet, angry precision Armitage seen him rummage in the engine of his car. It’s absent from the garage. Instead, there is a bucket of white paint tipped onto its side. The contents are streaking down the concrete onto the driveway.

“Sir?” Armitage called from the path.

Paint spattered on the primulas and daffodils as Mr. Solo jerked back on the soft ground. He turned and checked himself by waving to Armitage with the brush.

“Oh, hey kid!” he called out, trying to find his footing on the slope of the flowerbed. “If you are trying to find peace and quiet from your folks this is probably not the best place.”

Armitage watched Mr. Solo’s heel snap the stems of snowdrops before he asked, “Is Ben home?”

“Oh—” Mr. Solo scooted in the crumbling earth and turned to the house. “ _Ben_!” he yelled, falling on his ass and recovering to yell again. “ _Be—en_!”

A window slid up, spilling out the sound of music competing with the downstairs TV. “ _Ye—ah_!” came in the same tone as Mr. Solo’s call.

“Your friend is here!”

It took a moment for the droning guitar to drain out and Armitage heard the thumping of the staircase before the door handle clattered and turned. Ben stood on the front step of the house with his shoelaces undone, pulling a jumper over his head. He shouldered past Armitage and clicked his tongue like he was calling a dog as he went out of the gate, shoe laces still loose.

They went through the garden of a neighbour’s house, followed by the bark of a Shih Tzu that ran along the sill of the living room window. The Archers played from the kitchen, drained out by the sound of the scorching pan. They went out of the gate of the pampered back garden, into the fields where they caught the smell of smoke that rose from the valley.

Ben faltered in the heather, breathing in deep the muggy air. “How do you think they never kill any birds in the fire?” he asked.

“’Cause none of them are stupid enough to get caught in the moorburn,” Armitage muttered to him.

Smoke sailed on the drab waves of burnished heather. The blue morphed the colours, rising up from the hidden patterns of ash on the ground.

“I want to see it,” Ben said and charged down the slope of the fields like a mad ox.

Armitage took one step to follow and stopped. “You can’t—” he tried to call out, but his voice came hollow. “Ben, you can’t— Stop!”

Ben didn’t listen and kept walking until it was clear he wasn’t waiting for Armitage to follow. Armitage ran to not lose sight of Ben. He didn’t know why; he is older than Ben by a year, he started secondary school before him too. But Armitage followed him, like he was waiting to gain Ben’s approval despite every word the boy spoke somehow moulding to curb Armitage. His swinging moods would be bite at him, even if he didn’t cause them, until Ben was drained of sense.

They climbed the drystone walls down the slopes of the valleys where the heather grew thicker and the moss sank into water. Ben followed the smoke with his nose upturned to the sky, eyes squinted as he pulled Armitage through the copper ferns. They saw the tracks of the fires, but the smoke came from somewhere lower, by the river valley where the ground became steep and stone crumbled into heather.

Smoke swelled in the ravine like fog. Breathing shallowly, Armitage coughed and winced, keeping his watery eyes on Ben’s feet as he followed on slippery rubber soles. The smoke was like opal made liquid as its milky body shifted between colours, or the fog machines in movies that came from nowhere – all white and thick. But, unlike the movies, the smoke burned. Armitage tried to tell Ben, but the boy ran ahead, beating a trail in the old woody heather toward the plumes.

“Come on!” Ben reached back, grabbing the sleeve of Armitage’s raincoat. He pulled him like a puppy new to a leash refusing to follow. “It will be out before we reach it because of you.”

With glassy eyes focused on their feet, they did not see the fire come from the steep slope overhead. The smoke gushed onto them like a flood. Armitage braced in time, pulling his hood over his head and covering his eyes with palms. But Ben’s hand slipped off his sleeve.

Armitage heaved, reaching through the fog and grasping for Ben without a sense of direction. He stumbled, trying to find a clearing in the smoke to breathe, but tripped over Ben who was sat on his haunches with his head between his knees.

Armitage grabbed him by the shoulders of his jumper and dragged. Ben tried to batter him off with fists, coughing through tears and snot running on his face. But Armitage kept pulling until Ben gave in. The boys stumbled up, holding onto each other, reeling from the rippling smoke as the fires crackled in the heather behind them—in front—

They tried to toe back onto the path they made, surrounded by the acrid sting of the oncoming fire. Armitage slipped on the thick roots of old heather, collapsing on the crumbling layers of black earth beneath it.

“Get up!” wheezed Ben, somewhere overhead, as he pulled Armitage by the hood of his raincoat – uncaring that he was choking Armitage until he stood.

They ran, grasping each other as they bowed away from the smoke, tripping on the uneven ground that slipped from under their feet. It was all ash and detritus, from the previous moorburns since the forests were cut from these slopes.

They ran, with burning eyes and chests full of smoke, until they fell across the stones of a collapsed wall. Wildfowl cries followed them, distanced by the pounding of blood in their ears. Ben gathered himself, sniffling. His hands were covered by soot and dirt, knuckles torn. Armitage couldn’t hear the wind over his heaving.

With his hands scrunched into the moss between the stone, Armitage watched the rising wall of smoke over his shoulder.

They stood from the grass and stone and walked home with faces of soot. Ben went through the gate of Armitage’s home. Mum was already gone from the chair by the door, the kitchen window was steamed up.

Ben looked back as he walked to the corner of the house, rubbing his nose with knuckles that came away black. Armitage hadn’t noticed; he was struggling with the key of the backdoor that would not open unless lifted on the hinges.

The key skipped in the locked and opened freely. Armitage went inside, wiping his face on the sleeve of his raincoat, unaware of Ben’s wide eyes following him.

 

 

The song thrushes are struggling in the rowan, shaking dew onto the ground. Flakes of blue paint are twirling from the canopy of the front door. The morning is still with fog.

Hux hasn’t changed since yesterday. His clothes are sticking to his skin and his hair is limp against his sallow face. He knocks on Ben’s door and locks his red fingers on the handle of the vacuum.

Song thrush are swallowing the rowan berries. It’s silent in the house. Somewhere, the water glugs and steam scolds a pipe. Hux still feels the dust between his fingers, filling the cuts left by splinters. It stained him as he spent the night scraping the grime from the ground level of the house. There were pellets of curled beetles and flies in the kitchen behind the cupboards and the stove, underneath the peeling wallpaper behind the displays. Shrivelled slugs lied in the corners of the pantry, dust dried to their trails.

Hux tried to sleep, lying on the sofa in the living room. But the clicking of the pipes underneath the floorboards like the tapping of fingers kept him flinching. He watched the bare timber underneath the rugs, thinking he could see them shift with clicks and pops like the nails were being pried out from beneath.

After three hours of turning, Hux gotten up and began to shift the cabinets from the walls. There were thumps on the floor as he moved the furniture. He thought the plywood backing was giving away. With snot dribbling from his nose, Hux hadn’t noticed the smell leeching from behind the cabinet.

Feathers drifted, black and brown in the stark yellow of the room’s lamps. Like spores of mould, dozens of birds were piled behind the cabinet. Their legs splayed like broken twigs, tattered feathers puffed from the shrivelled bodies.

Hux gagged. His eyes swam as his legs twisted. He crouched, heaving drily into the collar of his jumper. There was a scratching of feathers, softly flapping on timber. Hux stared at the dead birds, rolling out onto the carpets in their array of colour and breed – song thrush and blackbird, jackdaw and meadow pipit. Nothing moved. He looked at the floorboards and listened to the scratches picking through the gaps between the wood.

There wasn’t a part of Hux that didn’t become stained by the pungent sweetness of rot. He smells it on himself, among the sweat, as Ben opens the door.

There is a soft focus on Ben’s eyes. His shoulders are slouched underneath a sloping sweater that rolled up on his waist that barely holds up a pair of sweatpants. His mark dotted cheeks are red like he has been rubbing them on pillows.

Ben is wincing at the sunlight and the look on his face is lost as he stares across at Hux who speaks, “I’m apologise. I know it’s early—”

“Just a bit.” Ben yawns into his palms, eyes watering. He seems relaxed, easy in his own skin, unlike the humming mess he was. The change makes Hux uneasy, again.

“Right,” Hux mumbles as he lifts forward the vacuum. “I was going to return this.”

Ben stares, watching the cord swing, and then asks, “Were you fucking cleaning all night?” He catches the vacuum from Hux’s hand, shoving it somewhere behind the door. “Did you even sleep?”

“It’s disgusting at home,” Hux defends. “I would rather sleep with the sheep in a barn.”

Ben is stepping out of the door and clipping his hands on Hux’s wrists. He says, “Come inside.”

When Hux resists, pulling back by reflex, Ben yanks harder and tells him, “Come on, get in. You can sleep off that zombie look on my couch.”

Hux does not have it in him to be angry, to shove Ben aside as he is brought into the Solo house. It has the same peeling, floral trimmed wallpaper and whitened ceilings with rims of nicotine stains. The living room furniture has changed, but it’s not new – not with the dents and cracks in the leather. The cabinets and tables are full, like the Solos had left with an afterthought of returning another year.

The settee sags underneath Hux when he collapses, feeling the thrum of a headache pumping in his skull. The wooden door of a linen cupboard slams and Ben appears as he unfurls a loosely knit blanket that looks as though it had been pulled from a Cheshire carboot sale with yarn daisies and roses. Hux knows that it was from when the Solos liked to play pretend that their son had a friend and invited Hux to watch movies and eat junk food until midnight. They would get giddy on sugar, giggle over the movies until they were in tears.

“Armie?”

Fingers click in his face. The blanket is thrown onto Hux’s lap. His hands picked through the thick wool, finding pockets of warmth, the smells of the house – laundry softener, sauce stains, cigarettes and summer dust.

“Sleep—” Ben gestures down at Hux, forehead creased and lips pushed forward like the words are bubbling out from between his teeth. “—But takes your shoes off at least.”

Hux wavers and Ben shakes a hand in front of his eyes. He is smirking when Hux sways back on the settee without blinking, eyes sore in the red sockets.

Like a kid with a flu, sanctioned to stay home from school, Hux twists into the blanket and tips onto the musty pillows as the echoes of Ben recede on the floor above. He doesn’t take off his shoes, letting them drag out across the floor.

 

 

It was Good Friday, the beginning of the long weekend. Armitage and Ben were alone in the dead-end street with pockets full of tin foil wrappers and the instructions to stay in the garden perimeters – at least. The Huxes left early for respective social occasions and the Solos disappeared for shopping that somehow became last minute.

A red warning came on the weather broadcast for a storm moving inland. No one dared the moors, even with the potential of snow. So, boredom led them to the end of the street to Rae’s door. She was spending the long weekend in the kitchen between the broken spines of her files with the coffee brewing under hand, the radio on in the background with the static sound of conversations.

Armitage had tried to coax information about her unpublicised occupation, but Rae flipped closed the blue folders and told him to get out of her sight. She was biting her cheek when Armitage twisted his mouth at her. He had only known her through the acquaintances father brought home to discuss work, before she decided to move to the end of the street. It caused a low buzz between the neighbours. When Armitage asked, mum said Rae was there to keep an eye on things.

Banned from the kitchen and its entertainments, Armitage found a math worksheet folded in the pocket of his jeans. Rae hadn’t noticed when Ben snatched a pencil from the table’s edge for Armitage to scratch in the answers while pressing the paper to his knee.

It was cold to sit on the threshold of the backdoor, but Ben was in the garden, picking sticks from the hedges that overgrew and tangled with the poplars. There were frost stung raspberry bushes and roses that never grew buds, but whose roots conquered Rae’s garden that, being on the end of the street, was larger than most. By the gate was a young cypress with low, slightly browned branches that had been snapped by torrents. Despite this, woodpigeons had been using it for their third annual attempt for a family.

The winds from the moors were bending the cypress and the sounds of frantic birds came whistling with them. It brought in Ben’s interest as he squinted up at the branches, trying to gauge where the nest was sloping off. He hadn’t noticed the white and black spotted cat, sitting on the garden wall between the poplars, watching the same spot as he.

The sheet of paper was crumpled on Armitage’s knee when the cat loped off the garden wall onto the cypress. Ben had lost interest and wiped the snot from his lip as he kicked up the grass, the curls of his black hair thrown back by the wind.

Armitage watched the cat’s progress through the tree, losing track of it when it hopped onto the branches covered in foliage. He looked down at the paper on his lap, the pencil had scratched squiggles in the margin. He didn’t remember where he left off.

Branches creaked and snapped. Ben yipped, running out of the way of a falling cat as it tipped into the brambles. The cat screamed as it thrashed in the thorns and ran into the shrubs as feathers filled the air around Ben, swept by the wind into the poplars. A small lump was left on top of shrubs, spilling out chunks of moss and down out onto Ben’s feet. The boy screeched and jerked back as a mass, no more than his fist, fell into the nettles from the cocoon of twigs and feathers.

For a moment, nothing happened. Ben stood aside, watching the patch of nettles. Then, he crouched down and reached forward, fingers splayed. Armitage couldn’t see Ben well as he disappeared between the brambles and roses.

There was a frightened squawk from the shrubs and Ben jerked back, hands held to his chest. He turned, a red grin on his face. “Armitage!” he shouted. “Armie—!”

The sheet and pencil fell underneath Armitage’s feet as he ran down the garden. The brambles ripped the cuffs of his coat and his trainers slipped on the ground. The wind gathered in his collar, pulling him from reaching Ben.

The boy thrusted his hands out toward Armitage, spilling with grey down speckled by red. “Look!” he shouted. His face was rushing with colour and his lips showed the chipped line of his stained teeth. “Look! The cat brought it down from the tree!”

There was a woodpigeon chick in Ben’s palms, its legs struck out between his fingers, featherless wings askew and large head with knobby beak hanging over the side of his thumbs. There was blood on the wrinkled pink skin between the grey spikes of the unsprouted feathers. The woodpigeon’s head bobbled, unsteadily as though a toy’s.

“It’s probably not gonna survive,” Ben pouted as Armitage stared. “It will bleed right out.”

“Ben, put it back,” Armitage told him, but Ben didn’t hear; he was overridden by the hysterics of excitement.

“Look how ugly it is!” Ben insisted as he thrusted out the chick toward Armitage as its large eyes ogled them both.

Armitage squirmed, screwing his face and looking from the shrunken, bloody thing in Ben’s hands.

“It’s going to just be in pain, isn’t it?” Ben clutched the chick to his chest, scratching its bobbling head. “You know what we are going to have to do, right?”

“Just put it down!” Armitage hissed at the boy, unwilling to reach out and take the bird from him. “It’s dirty and you shouldn’t have it!”

Ben’s face stilled before twitching at his eyes as a snarl sprouted over his lips. “You don’t have to watch!” Ben spat as he lifted the chick away. “Fine! I’ll do it myself. You are no use anyway.”

Armitage watched Ben turn, not far enough that he couldn’t see his reddened fingers pinch on crooked neck of the bird, pulling the papery skin. The chick opened its beak, flapping the shrunk wings as though it could catch air underneath them. Armitage cringed when Ben kept pressing, twisting the column. He could hear the squeaks the bird made, scratching the boy’s hands as it tried to escape. Ben didn’t stop, hunched onto the desperate animal until it went limp in his red palms.

The chick’s head hung over Ben’s fingers, eyes glassy and beak open as though asking to be fed. It didn’t move when Ben tipped its head from one side onto the other with his thumbs.

The backdoor of the house slammed. Armitage thought it was wind until he heard Rae’s slippers slap her heels in the grass.

Armitage was pushed from his feet with the force Rae used to barrel into Ben. He dropped the pigeon into the brambles as he fell onto his ass. Rae grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him onto his feet, shaking the kid as his curly head shrunk against his shoulders.

It was difficult to tell what Rae had been saying to him; her voice ground against the wind, spitting like oil in a pan. Her hand snatched at the collar of Ben’s coat, forcing him to look up. The boy didn’t seem too concerned, he only watched Rae’s face with his large brown eyes as it twitched between words.

Rae’s voice pricked Armitage, burning his ears as he looked down at the lumped feathers lying at the foot of the brambles, covered by grass bent by the wind. Rae leaned closer to Ben’s face and Armitage balked. He knew she wouldn’t do anything; Rae hardly even liked to slap his hand away when he reached where he shouldn’t. Though father told her that, if needed, she has the permission to show Armitage a harder hand.

Armitage’s eyes burned as he stared at the feathers in the grass. Rae’s voice cut him, like nettles on sunburnt skin, welting it with white blisters. He wanted to run and stay, to grab Ben and to leave him there.

Armitage didn’t know when his hiccupping stopped Rae. She lost her focus on Ben, letting him go to follow the cat crawling between the shrubs shadowing the garden wall.

She didn’t wipe his face, only watched Armitage turn aside as hiccups shuddered in his throat until she was certain she didn’t need to take this further into her concern. She didn’t shush him or embrace him. She barked at Ben and sat them both on the step of the backdoor.

A drawer snapped and shut in the kitchen as plastic crinkled and slippers skidded. Rae didn’t expect appreciation from them as she dumped packets of gum, pop rocks and sherbet between Armitage and Ben. She returned to the kitchen table, stifling their murmuring and the ripping plastic with the radio.

A bag of Cadbury chocolate buttons from the emptying pile was shoved into Armitage’s hand. He thumbed the chocolate slips through the plastic, staring at the grass bending into the wind. Ben’s hand was warm over his, but Armitage didn’t feel it. Feathers were caught in the brambles like snowflakes and lifted by the wind.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'when the night is over' and 'yawning grave' by lord huron are great mood songs for this fic :>

 

_I have come to the borders of sleep,_

_The unfathomable deep_

_Forest where all must lose_

_Their way, however straight,_

_Or winding, soon or late;_

_They cannot choose._

 

\- Edward Thomas, 'Lights Out'

 

 

* * *

 

 

The local weather forecast hums through the brick walls, voices scattering on the tiles of the kitchen. Did he fall asleep after school? In the living room with his backpack hooked around his shoulder? Mum will be back soon, father will be finishing work upstairs.

An engine is revving in the garden. Hux spasms up under the knitted blanket, eyes unfocused in the light as he wheezes into the armrest of the settee. His feet are too warm in his shoes and his skin is thick with sweat under the cotton and wool of his clothes. Hux wipes his hand under his nose, sniffling. His neck is cramped and legs ache after dangling from the sofa.

The garage door closes, the steel shutters clacking as a key is fitted in the lock. Hux sits up, bundling the blanket around his shoulders. An old radio is rattling in the kitchen. A large, yellow framed clock face above the window shows its two in the afternoon. Hux feels the cold sting as he walks from the living room into the kitchen.

The chairs are fitted against the table, covered in coats that never made it to the hallway. Receipts are weighed by pens and opened envelopes, interspersed with torn packets of gum. There is a plate, covered by a large bowl, with the scrap of an envelope lying over the base. ‘Armie’ is scratched into the paper in blunt pencil. Hux lifts the bowl and cringes at the greasy smell of fried eggs and toast swimming in oil. The food is vaguely warm.

Nausea thickens in Hux’s mouth as he sets aside the bowl. He looks into the back garden. It’s empty. Hux picks up the plate and heads to the door; he might be able to scrape the food into the bins while the clattering beside the garage covers the sound of the door opening.

Veering through the room, Hux reaches for the door handle, but it twitches under his palm. The oil of the toast and eggs slips around the plate, catching on his fingers as Hux jerks back. The door pushes inside, lock held from making a sound despite the bucket and mop clattering behind the door.

Mud is flaking from Ben’s face and hair in the pale afternoon light. Underneath the black wool padded hoodie, his thermal shirt is crusted with dirt much like his boots and trousers that have lost their colour underneath the layered filth. Ben’s eyes are on Hux, twitching to blink as he steps inside. He looks down at the plate that is dragging the edge of the drooping blanket on Hux’s shoulders.

The lock clicks. Ben points to the plate and says, “Cutlery.”

Dirt is crumbling through the kitchen after Ben’s boots and their unspooling laces as he walks toward a draw and pulls out a mismatched selection of kitchen ware. There is a bent fork with a blue plastic handle that is shoved onto the plate, followed by a scratched polka dot butter knife with blunted ridges.

When Ben sees the brown smudges he left on the plate he starts picking at his hands, scrubbing them on the clean hems of his hoodie. “Sorry—I wasn’t expecting you to eat that with your hands,” he says. “I was in a hurry; woke up late and wanted to get out onto the hills before the crowds with the dogs— Shit, it’s not too cold is it?” Ben looks down at the plate.

“No, it’s fine…” Hux replies as he watches the grease swim on the porcelain rim.

Held hostage at the kitchen table with the fork and knife, Hux watches Ben shake dirt out of his hiking boots as he chews on the lukewarm toast. The laces are stripped out of the eyelets and thrown into the sink where they simmer in soapy water. Ben doesn’t feel a need to leave the room as he pulls off his filthy thermal shirt to throw it into the washing machine. Hux observes the breadth of his tanned shoulders, a direct contradiction to the bony weed that jabbed Hux with elbows to the ribs to go hunting toads in the bushes.

Ben pulls on the hoodie, leaving it to hang off unzipped. He doesn’t notice Hux gagging on the clumped toast. He has discovered that it’s easier to stomach the food it it’s piled together, with the eggs stacked onto the scorched toast. Ben ruins the process when he opens his mouth.

“I figured you’d stay away from this place in the south somewhere,” Ben tells him, picking the pulled threads from his trousers. “Did they let you have time off or something?”

Despite the American accent, that Hux can’t pinpoint, crawling thick across Ben’s drawl, he recognises the syntax he learned from primary school. It must be coming back to him, catching the mannerisms from the bikers on the moors.

“No,” Hux says. “Free time is just a perk of being between jobs.”

“Oh.” Ben stands from the table. His eyes won’t meet Hux’s as he switches off the rattling radio and reaches for a cupboard fixture over the counter. Packs of kit-kats and Maryland cookies drop onto the counter. The kettle is flicked on without the water being checked.

“How long are you staying here on Leia’s good graces?” Hux asks while wishing for something cold to drink and force the food down his throat. His head is aching, he wants to lie down and let the moment pass.

“However long I can make the college funds last.”

“You left? I thought college was the reason your parents shipped you back to America.”

“I dropped out after a year,” Ben grunts as he twists off the Nescafe Gold jar lid. Then, he says, “I like the cold here more. It keeps my head clear.”

Two mugs are lined on the counter. Water rumbles into their stained bellies as Hux wipes off his greased palms on a dishcloth he finds hanging limp beside the sink.

The pain at the base of Hux’s skull is filling his head. He thought it was just the crick from sleeping on the settee. But it is beginning to remind him of the nausea from the dust as he climbed the stairs in the haze of the motes. It’s not so far from when he stood on the landing with a bag full of torn wallpaper and rotting sparrows coated in beetles that had died before they climbed out of the feathers.

A mug is fitted into Hux’s fingers, scolding him. He should speak, ask about America, why is Ben living on the money Leia saved for college. How long has he been here. But Hux drowns the syllables creeping through his throat with coffee that scrapes his tongue with the heat. He is watching Ben dump packets of sugar from Costa into his mug. With the hoodie unzipped, Hux can see the sweat on his chest, where the mud had seeped through the fabric onto his skin.

Sitting across from the boy that used to push Hux’s face into the mud and shove wet grass behind his collar, he feels indifferent – neither running nor begging to stay. The blanket is falling off his shoulder and his nose is dipping into the coffee mug that has left his palms dry and warm. His lips are gummy with sleep and the oil of fried eggs.

Ben is wiping chocolate from the corner of his mouth as he finishes the sixth cookie and pushes back his hair. Like a mote of dust, a dark feather curls on the air.

Ben feels Hux staring and feverishly pieces the curls of his hair between his fingers. The movement lifts up feathers which twirl down onto the kitchen table from where they slip down onto the floor.

The mug clatters onto the timber. The blanket has dropped from Hux’s rigid shoulders. “What is that?” he asks.

Ben looks over at Hux and mumbles fervently, “What?”

The chair screeches. “What the hell is _that_!” The cutlery shakes on the table as Hux stands.

Ben pushes back in his chair, hands gripping the seat as he stares. He isn’t aware of the feathers wisping onto the floor. “What is _what_?”

“That!” Hux shouts, face red, and pushing around the table toward Ben who stands.

Feathers are lifted off the floor by footsteps as Ben stumbles. His eyes are wide when Hux marches onto him, tearing his hands into the collar of Ben’s hoodie. They are nose to nose, pale eyes fixed on the mole and dirt spattered face. Hux can smell the fir and pine on him and the dew of the grassland, but all he sees are the feathers circling in the sunlight.

“Are you fucking with me, Ben?” The shock allows Hux advantage to shake Ben by the front of his hoodie, cinching the fabric to his throat. “You think this is _funny_?”

Ben raises his hands as he stumbles back, slipping on his loose socks. “Armitage,” he says, “I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about!”

Soot spirals in Hux’s eyes. He doesn’t make a sound as he runs Ben into the wall. The cupboards rattle and the plastic rimmed clock squeaks on the nail. Hux’s wrists are caught in hands that squeeze the bones under the papery skin. His arms are twisted away.

Hux pushes out of Ben’s hands and sets his nails to his throat. He shoves him on the chokehold out of the kitchen and into the living room. Ben slips and his legs twist out. His grip on the sleeve of Hux’s sweater tears them both onto the floor. Nails scrape red tracks down Ben’s neck as Hux thrashes against his weight holding him down. He heaves like a dog above Ben, spitting curses that foam on his lips.

Feet scrape on the floor, heels battering the boards. Someone screams, and palms beat in a frenzy. Hux hisses, handled like an animal to the ground with a hand on his neck and his arms twisted to his shoulder blades. Ben is saying nothing, panting against Hux’s ear as he crouches above him.

“You piece of Solo shit!” Hux’s spit spatters on the floorboard, his cheek smeared against the wood.

Ben pushes him down by the neck, scraping Hux’s chin on the cracks of the floorboards. Hux shakes and kicks his legs, trying to reach Ben as he flings his elbows back. In his rage, Hux isn’t conscious of the grey feathers sweeping down the floor until they brush on damp face.

Hux stares at them, unfocused, spit dripping from his mouth. Ben begins to lift off him. The sound that leaves Hux is unrecognisable, as though a fox caught in a lure.

Ben is flung onto the floor, thrown by kicking feet. Hux is crawling away toward the door, falling when he is pulled by the hems of his trousers. He shakes of the hands and stands to look back and sees Ben’s wild eyes. So fucking innocent, begging why Hux is angry what has he done. _Why why why why_ —

Blood splits Ben’s lip and nose. Hux wasn’t aware of when he lifted his fist. Ben falls, eyes on the red dotting the floor. _Pit, pat, pit, pat_ —

The door slams into the wall of the hallway. Hux runs through the garden, the blue paint flaking under his hand as he reaches for the gate.

 

 

Father’s car was parked on the street. Armitage could hear him on the phone in the kitchen – something last moment, that couldn’t wait until they left the cemetery. Armitage was waiting in the hallway, tugging on the sleeves of his shirt to make it seem like it fitted under the blazer.

He could hear father, droning in his boardroom voice. Armitage wanted to call to him or point out the clock. Instead, he scratched the gel on his hairline and twisted the crusted strands between his fingers.

Two thirds of the hooks in the hallway were empty, draped in the blacks and greys of his and father’s coats. A floral umbrella hung wrapped in its casing behind the door, tucked beside the shoe rack. Armitage took it, turning it over several times before walking toward the kitchen.

Letters and papers were sorted and packed on the coffee table in the living room. A pen set aside for signatures. A stack of boxes on an armchair with a neat print of names Armitage did not know.

The kitchen was held in rapture of father’s footsteps as he paced the tiles, buttoned in his suit that he insisted on being redone after receiving it from the tailor (it made him look too full – too true to form). Armitage watched him, undoing the velcro strap of the umbrella, ripping it on and off. He watched his father’s pale, rosacea pricked face flap with the words that caught in his moustache with the spit. He watched his eagerness for the words on the other end of the phone, like a dog bouncing on its hind legs for a treat.

Armitage dropped the umbrella into the bin beside the back door through which he left.

The washing lines were empty on the overcast sky. Sparrows were bobbing on the rope beside the pole, pushing for space with the blue tits. The daffodils were refusing to be overshadowed in the flower beds, showing their variety of yellow-white heads above the crocuses. The grass hadn’t been cut, though it started to yellow underneath the winter growth.

The gate of the drive rattled. Armitage looked up as he passed the front of the house, his leather shoes wobbling on the broken flagstones. His ankle twisted when he noticed Ben with his elbows perched on the low gate, holding a blue pot of tall leaves sprouting from soil. His white shirt was rolled to the elbows, no jacket but a furiously ironed tie. He has shot up like a demented dandelion since he turned fourteen, outgrowing clothes in the spans of months. He was still thin as a willow sprig.

Ben looked at him, lips cautiously pinched. Armitage went to him before either could back out.

Ben straightened from the gate, both hands on the flower pot. “Hey,” he said.

Armitage nodded, pocketing his hands.

“Are you—Okay?” Ben asked with a wince.

“Yes. We will be going soon. Father has some business that couldn’t wait.”

“Even today?”

Armitage shrugged and leaned against the gate beside Ben. Looking out onto the street, he could see a black car parked outside of the Solo house, one door open.

“Mom wanted me to give you these.”

The pot was held toward Armitage. He looked down at the leaves with the fat purple bulbs sticking out of the compressed black soil. He took the base of the pot in his palms.

Ben snatched away his hands, shoving them in the pockets of his trousers. “Mom said those are hyacinths,” he pronounced carefully. “She has lots of them in the backyard. Their smell gets everywhere once they bloom.”

Armitage prodded the buds and watched them sway like grapes, overweighing the pot.

“If you put them on a window sill, they’ll grow within a week.”

Ben glanced between Armitage and the flowers, his bite crusted lips scrunched in a pout. His eyes were wide when Armitage looked at him and pulled a smile.

The front door closed behind Armitage. He turned to his father with the flower pot against his chest. Brendol didn’t look at him as he leafed through a pocket book that Armitage saw feverishly subjected to a pen on the kitchen table.

A warm palm grabbed onto Armitage’s elbow, burning a stain through the jacket. “Will you come over, later?” Ben asked. “Mom and dad keep asking you for dinner. Will you, Armie?”

“Sure,” Armitage told him, dismissing as he rushed to the house.

The pot of hyacinths was put behind the front door, on the shelf above the shoe rack, to be remembered a week later by the smell of their blooming.

 

 

The rugs have been pulled away from the living room floor. The furniture is against the walls. The floorboards have been relayed over the originals at least every two decades since the foundations were fixed into the clay earth. Beneath the hard-oak boards are the greying timber ribs. The smell of must comes with the cold air from underneath the house. Hux breathes through it, the mould and dew swollen moss, like the green on the bones in the bracken.

He is sat beside the splintered boards thrown from grey wound in the floor. The bare soles of his feet are black, old sweatpants bunched to mid-calf and t-shirt is soft with sweat. His eyes are pink and nose wet. Hux licks his crusted lips as he drags his fingers over the crumbling boards he discovered after scalping the floor. He couldn’t stand the sounds anymore.

The wind pushes through the cracks in the wood.

“Shut up,” Hux says.

The boards moan, shifting on the bent nails.

“Shut the fuck _up_ ,” Hux tells them with as much force as his numb lips manage.

Hux dashes the following whimper with his sharp fist. The boards shudder and he is screaming— _shut up, shit up, SHUT UP_ — The old timber is marked by dark spots.

Hux pushes his fingers between the boards, feeling the cold pressing against them. “Why can’t you stay quiet, dad.”

An engine grunts through the downpour that came from the hills in late evening. Hux snatches away his hand. The sound of the engine comes back. He can tell it’s from the end of the street, in the dead end. The hedges of the front garden cover most of the sight beyond the drive’s gate.

Hux stands, unsteady in the dark with teeth askew in his jaw, and lurches from the living room. The dark of the staircase is fuzzy, moving with static. Hux grips the bannister as he runs. The engine is winding, rumbling through the rain that thuds on the window of the landing.

Hux is lightheaded in the upstairs hallway, shaking when he reaches the door handle of the boxed room that was his. The bed has been cleared out, gone to a landfill, the walls were stripped ivory. Hux rushes to the window, kicking apart the boxes. He pulls on the latch and the cold air snaps against his face.

The rain is thick, blurring the dark into an incoherent rush. A white light breaks through it, two twin spots at the end of the road. It catches on the rain as an engine shudders and wheels scratch on the gravel. Hux watches the car push through the dark, passing into the fog of the rain toward the exit from the street.

Hux looks down at the dead end. The only house he sees is Rae’s. He does not hear the car on the road passing through the moors.

 

 

A spoon is balanced on the rim of the bowl of microwaved rice. Hux has placed it on a chair to scrape the drying grains from his sweatpants while he drinks coffee from a yellowed mug. The grains, wrapped in dust and hair, roll onto the kitchen tiles and under the cabinets as he flicks them off. Hux will clean them out later, he promises.

Between sleeping and driving furniture to the recycling centre, Hux has done nothing. His phone is silent, either without reception or battery. It must be forgotten somewhere under piled clothes he can’t wear anymore because of the smell.

The bags are still in the hallway. Hux slept on the sofa, segmenting a corner for himself. Far from upstairs, close enough to the door. But then the floors started to move and Hux would wake up with his head under the blanket as he tried to quiet the scratching on the floor from beneath. He left the living room for the kitchen and sat at the table with his head against the surface until his eyes stopped throbbing with colour.

The house smells of damp dust and rain, but in the kitchen Hux thinks he can still catch the stench of the hyacinths Ben brought fifteen years ago before his mum’s funeral. They smelled sweet, like the aftermath of rotting skin, the bloating stomach of an animal before it bursts. Hux heard Leia compliment their scent as their blossoms peppered her garden, saying that it got rid of the smell of  the oil and paint from the garage.

The front door is rattling. Hux can hear it in the autumnal silence, the squeaking and scraping of the lock. Rice scatters on the floor as Hux stands. The spoon from the mug drops onto the floor as he grips the coffee to his chest. He walks hunched through the house.

The curtains are closed in the living room; the light has been hurting Hux’s eyes too much. There is no way of checking who is at the door without pulling back his shelter.

There is a knock through the timber that jolts Hux back a step in the hallway spilling the coffee onto his t-shirt. He flinches, expecting it to be boiling. But it’s lukewarm. No, cold.

“Armitage!”

The sound is right against the crack of the door. Hux takes hold of the key and turns it.

Ben stumbles over the threshold with the wind, one hand flung out as he catches himself against the wall of the hallway. His eyes are wide and red as he measures Hux up from underneath his fringe. There are scabs on his lips, a split red mark over his nose bloated with bruises. He has been scratching at it, Hux can tell.

“What is wrong with you!” Ben heaves as he takes a step into the house.

Hux backs into the doorway of the living room. “With me? Why are you barging into my house? What is wrong with _you_?”

The focus of Ben’s stare doesn’t falter, face half casted in the white light of the open door. “You didn’t answer for twenty minutes. Your car is in the driveway.”

Twenty minutes… How was it twenty minutes. Hux doesn’t ask this; he doesn’t need to give Ben more excuses to speak. “How did you know I didn’t walk somewhere?”

“Armitage,” Ben says with a delirious laugh, “There is nothing in walking distance of this street.”

“The moors?”

“You hate them. I had to force you to go there.”

“What if I didn’t want to speak to you?”

“Too bad.”

Hux stares down at Ben’s chest, at the open collar of his black fleece jacket with dirty cuffs. Anything but the yellowing stains on Ben’s nose and lip, he supposes. “What do you want?”

Ben follows Hux’s glare, watching his eyes return to his own. “I want you to get dressed and follow me.”

“Where?”

“The moors.”

He almost laughs. “Will you leave if I say no?”

There hadn’t been much packed into Hux’s bags for sighting the mud oozing pastures and scrambling in the bracken. But he hadn’t been stupid enough to avoid bringing boots that would survive the filth of the fields. He does not change from the sweatpants and t-shirt, pulling the feather padded coat with a fur lined hood as he returns to the hallway.

Ben is in the living room, standing over the mess Hux left, looking into the bared ribs of the house. His large back is hunched, shoulders bunched together, dark head bowed. Has he seen the ripped wallpaper, the exposed brick and plaster behind the cabinets? The feathers and the broken legs of the blackbirds? Hux sees his booted foot touch the blackened boards. The wood whimpers and sweat itches on Hux’s skin.

“Ben,” Hux snaps as he pulls on his coat, whipping through the living room. “Didn’t you want to go somewhere?”

Ben looks at him, his ugly red lips open on the chipped line of his teeth. Hux marches to the backdoor.

The wind is sharp and the door slams back into the frame after the handle slips from Ben’s fingers. They are stood on the flagstones between the brambles, watching song thrush scatter from the neighbour’s rowan tree, visible between the poplars.

Ben walks through the garden, toeing over the rusting junk in the overgrown grass. He kicks the brambles that snag on his jeans as he looks at the pond overgrown with green, crawling out of the stone border. Patches of black water peer through like thick, budding tar.

Hux follows him through the landfill of green, threading his footsteps into Ben’s, wondering where all the rubbish has come from. At the gate, they see the mist of rain coming with the wind. Ben pulls on his hood as he unlatches the gate and walks out onto the brown-green grass of the declining hill.

It takes them two steps to overcome the drystone wall. The heather sinks to their calves as Ben leads down to the valley, his large back held at the edge of Hux’s sight while he leans away from the rain and watches the curved roots of the heather under the moss.

They pass over exposed black earth where the ground has slipped, feet pressing deep footsteps into the decay of the heather and bracken. Hux watches the black berth of Ben’s back as he stumbles toward the fern bank, arms jerking for balance. Hux does not know where Ben has been, what forced him out of being a scampering weed of a boy with chipped teeth from falling on stairs—rocks—flat concrete. How does he fits into this body that swelled like dough, bursting from the bowl.

But the eyes are the same, when he turns back to grab Hux by the wrist and pull him after, onto the ledge of soft earth. His broken teeth, crooked at the canines, bite into his red lips broken with a cut.

They don’t speak, except to offer directions through the gorse slopes toward the copse of pine and hazel sinking into a valley. The wind is violent in the canopies, swaying them in arches. Hux tries to ask Ben if he knows where he is going, but a backward stare keeps him quiet.

Hux loses his breath as they start to climb again, taking the thin trails between the trees toward the hilltop hidden by a growth of spruce. Ben is lost, the crackling of his feet in the undergrowth gone in the sound of the rain on Hux’s hood. He pauses to breathe while his chest and legs burn. His twists his hands into the bracken, tethering himself from the rush of the wind on the hillside.

Hux grips the outcrops of moss as he passes the spruce. Meadow pipits are bobbing between the heather, their tiny brown bodies whipped by the fine rain.

“Armie— Look!”

Ben is a shadow on a jut of rock. The grass is rough and thin as Hux grabs it with red hands to pull himself against the incline. His boots sink to ankle in mud, feet numb and heavy.

There is a burn in Hux’s throat once he reaches Ben that stops him from speaking. He doesn’t see the hills, auburn with late autumn bracken in the rain. His eyes are pulsing with colour, popping with pressure that pushes through his skull. He is too warm and too cold. The yellow grass is thrown against the ground by the wind which slams Hux into Ben. He jerks aside, elbow caught against Ben’s sternum.

“Look,” Ben insists again, obliviously trying to turn Hux with a hand on his arm.

On the next gust, the grass opens around the earth. Hux sees it, the copper and white deformed by prints of ash and mud. The grey shrunk limb of tongue is growing through the curled snout like a root, eye sockets bloated and brown, gums dry against the bone. The black dipped paws are thin, thrown through the grass, touching the edge of Hux’s boot. Wind combs the auburn hair, rooting tributaries of grey skin.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Ben says in the whipping wind that has scalped his hood. His black hair ripples on the grey sky and his hand is on Hux’s, red knuckled and cracked. “I didn’t even know foxes come up here. Is it like a cat thing? Do you think it came up here because it was old and shit? Or was it sick? I heard that things like ants can get mind manipulating parasites—”

Hux spasms and his legs buckle. Ben grabs him, yanking his body tight against his side.

“Wow, twinkle toes,” laughs Ben with a tightness in his throat. “What happened there? Dropped into a rabbit h—”

Hux shoves Ben. “ _Shut up_!” he screams, his feet slipping on the rain slick bone. “Shut the _fuck up_!” He throws his fists at Ben, clawing the thick black fleece like a weasel caught in a fight with a pinned net.

“Hey, hey—! What are you doin—!” Ben is caught short when an open palm and torn nails scald his face, from the temple to his jaw.

“You are doing this on purpose!” Hux is shrieking and battering Ben through his shielding arms, yanking the sleeves. When the fabric fails to tear, he grabs Ben’s hair and wrenches it by the tangled ends, pulling his head to show his white neck. But Hux is caught by the wrists, shoved aside. He slips, legs twisted out, and falls onto the ground.

Then, Hux is screaming and thrashing, ignorant to the sound ricocheting across the hollow valleys through the rain. The filth of ash and fur is sinking into his clothing, his hair, smearing on his hands as he tries to stand. Hux kicks Ben when his shadow comes over him and Ben grabs for his legs, pulling them to stop him from moving. Colour is splotching Ben’s face, red and white puckered lines twisting with his frown as he tries to control Hux’s hysteria.

“Stop—! Just fucking _stop_!” Ben grunts as he is slammed in the chest by Hux’s soles. “What do you mean I did this? What is going on! I don’t understand you are talking about!”

Hux’s Hux pauses, his face is red in the rain, burning up under his wind wrung hair. “Bullshit—! It’s _bullshit_!” He screeches as he twists Ben’s arms wrapped around his ankles by jerking his body and pulling himself by the clumps of grass. But he begins to slow, silencing, until he only says, “If it wasn’t you—If it wasn’t…” The lines of his face are levelling in the rain, eyes bulging pink. “If it wasn’t _you_ —They—Then—Da—”

A shriek causes Ben to drop Hux as he howls and crawls onto his knees, hands twisting into the dirt and grass.

The wail breaks off, thin and wavering. Hux’s face is pressed against his dirty fists, turned to watch the auburn fur shift in the wind. He wants to cover it with a sheet, wrap it like the lumps of birds he found this morning behind the furniture in his mum’s bedroom. Throw it out into the bins. He wants to scrape the dirt and fur off his skin. Forget it, like the stirring under the floorboards.

“Are you done?”

Ben is above Hux, he is taking his arms and lifting his numb body. His knees push against the backs of Hux’s own, straightening them as he falls back slack. Hands are underneath Hux’s arms when he stumbles. His hood is pulled up and Hux moans, shaking his head, but he is reprimanded by a hand on his neck.

“Are you going to pull my fucking hair again?” There is rain water on Ben’s slack hair, on his face, on his eyelashes, beading on the red swelling of the cuts.

Hux spits at him, turning to the fox in the grass, wanting to gather it in his hands. But Ben pushes him away.

They walk from the hilltop, into the valley copse, stumbling on the heather roots and thick moss. Between the trees, Ben asks him again and again. What happened? Hux only grunts and listens to him snort, jerking sharply when he is pushed on the shoulder.

The wind is shaking Hux, licking his sweat underneath his coat as he falls through the bracken on the open hills. Ben is behind him. Every time Hux falters, Ben waits with hands in his pockets. The voices of the skylarks are sparking in the torrents, but perhaps that’s Hux’s ears. He considers asking Ben.

Hux’s fingers are scraping on the rust of the gate’s clasp. He is pushed aside to watch Ben hang over the fence, hair over his stained face, as he fumbles in his place.

The door isn’t locked. Hux is shaking as he pulls down his coat. Ben’s feet knock against a kitchen chair as he shudders.

“Fuck,” Ben says, “It’s colder in here than outside.”

Hux’s hands are flexing into fists as shivers prickle his back in waves. They come harder and harder until it’s violent. White is picking dots in his irises. He thinks Ben is speaking, but the kitchen is empty. Wind shakes the pipes, hollowing Hux’s whimper.

An open palm slaps Hux’s shoulder. “Hey—” Ben turns Hux like a doll. “Hey,” he repeats and clicks his fingers at Hux’s nose. “Why weren’t you answering me? I was calling you.”

Pressure pulses over Hux’s skull as he is shifted by Ben’s hands.

“This fucking place is a shit tip. I thought you were cleaning—”

Hux turns from Ben and steps toward the living room. His feet scuff on the threshold. He stumbles.

The exposed floorboards bite into his chin and the scattered timber jumps, slamming into his legs. A strip of black is pressed against his eye. It breathes on his fever crawling skin. He thinks he can hear it, a scratch of shoes on bare floor of the basement. A sigh, blown into the must fogged air.

Sound comes from above as though through water. Hux is held up by his arms, arranged onto his knees, and lifted toward the sofa. He falls, struggling to distinguish light and dark and the brown eyes between in between.

Hux is held to the backrest. His head tips, rolls, and his body slides as though filled with water. His face crashes into the pillow and bunched blanket.

The sound of a voice scrapes against Hux’s ear. Nausea is rolling in his throat, weighing his head as he is tipped. Warmth traps him as he shakes with a heartbeat. Cold air burns his clenched teeth as he tries to suck in a breath.

Shadows are walking on the floorboards, like fingers in the light, touching the cracks. Hux moans when the thudding heartbeat chokes him, fills his skull, presses into the cracks and pushing until sense flows slow. Thoughts drip like pus. Humming strokes his ear. He can’t find sense as his head drops, rolling like a stone in the river.

 

 

The pollen and birdsong were thick in the air, impregnated by a thin breeze that bent the flowers in the beds lining the combed garden. Armitage drew a cigarette stub through the ash on the window frame of the car door. His bags were on the passenger seat, packed with textbooks from the university library.

Father was asleep. Armitage checked when he came inside, shoes left in the car. He glanced at the pipes under the stove as he passed. The break had gone unchecked, the old tape unspooled from gap of rust. Had mum been there, she would not have left a scrap of electric tape to secure the house from the chance of poisoning. She would’ve made this difficult.

Armitage walked up the staircase in the cool shadow of morning. There was a weight in his chest, a sudden flush of nausea that tipped him on the landing. He went to father’s bedroom. It was far too early for the old man to shift from the mattress after complaining to Armitage of migraines when he notified about visiting home. The door was open, and Armitage watched in the threshold as his father’s body lied under the covers, breathing.

It would have been easier with an excuse, to say that his father was a tyrant who beat him, who verbally demeaned him. Rather, he was an absence, a missing clipping in a story Armitage is forgetting. It doesn’t excuse Armitage’s actions. It’s only easier this way; Brendol Hux expired and his use to Armitage became limited.

The old man was worth enough for what work he had done. Armitage would not be thankless. He gave him an easy death. But, he supposed, the months of slow poisoning under the influence of gasses released into the house after Armitage damaged the old pipes had not been entirely kind. It all served its purpose.

In the garden, Armitage opened the garage where his father’s car was parked. He took a length of hose wrapped on the handle of the lawnmower underneath the tarp and fitted it to the exhaust of his own car. He trailed the tubing toward the backdoor, where he shoved it through the crack between the timber and frame.

The car engine switched on. Armitage sat behind the wheel. He allowed himself one cigarette. It won’t take long, he reasoned. Afterwards, he will go inside and check. He will call Rae, who is absent from her house as are the neighbours across the fence (a holiday in Italy, the others are in Cumbria). Then, he will wait on the threshold until the police arrives.

There won’t be a scene, he decided. It was too early for the neighbours to be awake. The Solo house was empty for three years. There wasn’t a chance of them deepening the mess.

Armitage pushed the ash off the window frame and switched off the car engine.

Dust was caught in the light of the staircase. Armitage was stood on the first step, watching the motes fall like feathers. He walked, his skin caught white in the daze of the bright day that disturbed the shadows of the house.

In his father’s bedroom, he sat at the foot of bed. The air was too warm, with the window closed, trapping the cycling dust. Armitage watched the mountains of his father’s shoulders and stomach under the sheets, waiting for a shift beneath the earth to collapse them. Nothing came.

Armitage reached across the sheets and took the old man’s ankle through the fabric. He shook it.

“Father?”

The man’s body twitched with the boy’s insistent tugs.

“Hey? Dad?”

When the police arrived, Armitage was in his car. ‘Mister Hux,’ they addressed him as he looked out of the window. ‘Mister Hux,’ they said again when he did not respond and watched them with red eyes. ‘We must escort you off the premises,’ they insisted.

Armitage watched his father being carried out on a stretcher into a silent ambulance. Rae refused the officers who had approached Armitage, calling him ‘Mister Hux’—‘Hux’—‘Hux’— She pulled a shelter of blankets around him, blocking Armitage from them with her back.

The ambulance doors closed. He did not know what happened to the house. Rae assured he shouldn’t be worried. They need to get him to the hospital—Exposure—Just to check—

A blackbird hopped across the gate of the drive, wings jostling as it watched the cars pack away. Armitage wanted to wring its neck, to snap the bone and tear the tendons. What if it had seen something? What if that poor dumb thing saw something… Something insane coiled in Armitage’s mind as he watched the bird hop across the road, disappearing in the spindle trees.

 

 

Dust is cycling in the light of the kitchen’s doorway. Hux is rocked as though on water. Except he is held by warmth, not the gulp of a lake. There is breathing against his ear, hands over his chest.

A line of light is pressing against the closed curtains, pricking pins through Hux’s eyes as he turns, lifting his head against the cramps. A shadow is pressed over Hux’s shoulder, rocking with arms tight around him. The blot of dark has large eyes and a mouth of full red lips.

“Are you gonna vomit?” the shadow says, right against his ear, the words are hot, slurring in an American accent.

Hux opens his mouth and gags on a syllable. Something pushes against his throat and he is shoving himself over the side of the sofa. Nothing comes with the dry heaving but the spit on Hux’s lips.

“Shi—it,” says the shadow as he rubs his hand over Hux’s back. “You could’ve said you are sick.”

A wet sound comes from Hux’s throat. His head is collapsing in on itself, the pressure crushing into a single point. He looks back over his shoulder, at the shadow of Ben, holding him from falling onto the floor.

Ben pulls him toward the couch, onto his chest with his palms over Hux’s sternum. “You’ve always had to be like this,” Ben rattles out. “Remember the sparklers when we were four? You’ve still got the scar from it.”

He does, it’s underneath Ben’s fingers as he rubs his knuckles. The Solos had invited Hux and mum on bonfire night, to bond as neighbours over something so ironically British. The children lit sparklers in the back garden while watching fireworks coming from the towns below the hills. Mum had gone away, for a reason Hux doesn’t remember. She left him to the Solos.

Ben had been burning holes in the leaves of the potted plants, beheading the browning flowers with a bubbling _whoooooosshh_. Leia and Han were wrangling Ben for the sparkler as he struggled and squirmed to jab the burning point through a rose bud. Hux stood at the edge of the patio, watching the popping sparks approach his glove down the charred rod. He wanted to ask where he should put the sparkler once it finished, but the Solos were occupied with containing Ben.

The flame came down to Hux’s fingers on the stem and started to melt his glove. He doesn’t remember there being pain as the sparking band of orange and white touched his small pale fist through the curling fibres of the glove. The blisters bubbled on his skin and his fingers became clawed on the shaking black rod of metal.

Ben was still screeching at Han when Leia threw the sparkler from Hux’s hand. She led him into the kitchen where she cut off the ruined glove and wiped his face with the sleeve of her soft white jumper when his nose bubbled with snot. Then, she led Hux home to his mum who dragged him over the threshold by the naked wrist. With courteous thanks, she saw Leia out of the gate and turned to Hux. Mum shoved his bare hand against his face, demanding ‘What is this’. When he kept crying, refusing to answer, she pushed his sweaty fist against his face and left him in the hallway.

“’course, you wouldn’t tell me you are sick.” Ben’s chest shakes against Hux’s spine. Their hands are locked over one another on his sternum in a pattern Hux can’t look away from.

Ben is a burning shape against his back, legs underneath his own, chin over his shoulder, tired eyes staring through the dust of the room. Hux pulls himself from Ben and crawls from his hands to the armrest. His folded legs are between them, dividing Hux from Ben’s stare that becomes weak and mellow when Ben tries to smile.

Hux is watching the air around Ben, where the pulsing shadows are bleeding from their borders and the strip of light between the curtains is thinning. The floorboards are shifting, creaking as something pushes against them. Hux wants to press back on them. _Dad. Dad, stop it. Just fucking stay where I put you. Stay there, you fucking old pig_ —

Except the shadows are bleeding onto him. Lips are trembling as they meet the corner of his mouth. They are rough from cold wind, but warm as Ben presses a kiss like a kid in the playground. His shaking hand is reaching for Hux, wavering between his arm and shoulder.

Hux watches him, lax against the back of the sofa. The shadows are fizzing on the surface of Ben’s cheeks and his closed eyelids. He loses the feeling of lips and realises that Ben is sitting aside, rubbing at his face, looking somewhere into the room. Hux misses his hands.

“Fuck—” Ben moans into his palms as his rubs them across his face. “What is it about this place and migraines!”

Even in the dark of the shuttered windows, Hux can see him going red. He is bumbling something through his fingers. Hux does not try to comfort him.

“You don’t have any painkillers upstairs, do you?” Ben stands without an answer and runs into the kitchen. The cupboards creak and slam in the aftermath of footsteps and frantic breathing.

Ben’s hands are tying knots in his hair when he reappears, muttering in passing, “I’ll—I’ll be back. Sorry—My head it’s—I’ll be right back.”

The front door shuts.

Hux stands and falters at the edge of the sofa. The house is becoming crooked, tipping with the incline of the hill. Hux lurches to the door before he is taken with the movement and turns the key as he falls forward. He looks into the living room. The scattered furniture and the clothing spread across it obscures his sight of the ruptured floor. He hears the beating under the boards, the scratch of heavy feet on the foundations. Wings are battering on the brick as fingers scalp the dust.

The garden gate crashes into the catch and Hux runs through the rooms into the kitchen where the light presses needles into his eyes. His sight glares with blue rimmed circles and chairs tip over as he grasps them to find the way to the backdoor. The key slips and slips in his fingers until Hux is moaning and slamming his red hand on the lock. It clicks.

The nails in the old floor are creaking as Hux drags a toolbox from under the sink, between expired bottles of unrecognisable liquids. There are pliers, wire, tape and screwdrivers. Hux takes a claw hammer that drags from his sweating hand. He turns to the living room.

Tears are crackling in the old wallpaper where Hux has been unable to close off the walls with furniture. Pellets of dried insects drop onto the floor through the cracks in the paper like mouse shit. A fist thumps against the floorboards. Claws scratch the concrete below the living room.

Hux’s footsteps scrape the tilting floor and the hammer cracks on the hollow of the exposed, grey wood. The timber crumbles as the claw catches in the boards and tears back. The splinters and dust choke Hux. He grips the head of the hammer and slams his fist against the frantic sounds beneath him of hands prying the boards. He decides he will silence them before they reach him.

Hux’s knees scrape the boards as his bare hands rip into the cracks of the splintering timber. Nails push into Hux’s knuckles and palms, tearing lacerations into his papery skin as the grey wood breaks. A hollow snap. Feathers erupt, huffing into the room like dust.

Hux breathes in the debris, face red and eyes watering. The head of the claw hammer is fisted in his palm, pressing deep lines into the skin as he kneels over the entryway. He watches the dark pulse underneath the murk of drifting dust. He can hear claws scattering in the concrete basement that has been sealed since before Hux had taken his first steps in the house. Just as well his father leeched into the corners he can’t reach.

An eye blinks from the pit of broken boards and Hux screams. Choking on his fear, he pushes his fist through the gap. His skin tears on the splintered boards and his shoulder catches on a bent nail. His chest, face, are pressed against the cold timber. The floor pulses with sound against his cheek as his hand grasps for something to reach.

Hux sees dust turn circles in the debris on the floor in front of his nose, forming cyclones in his breath. Cold latches on Hux’s fingers and his vision twists. The hammer in his hand at the surface of the floor slams into the ruined boards.

The breath of a voice pushes against Hux’s ear through the crevices between the boards and he wails. Hux jerks to pull back, but cold teeth bite onto his knuckles and bears him down. Hux slams his fist on the floor, screaming as the teeth slide down the bone of his hand. He pulls on his arm as a sound trembles beneath the boards. It rises with the sensation of wings cutting Hux’s knuckles.

Tremors are ripping through Hux, pushing into his throat, falling from him in a scream. Hux spasms, buckling from the teeth crawling over his arm and the feathers swarming underneath the floor around his arm. He convulses like an animal strung on rusting wire fence, resisting the need to lie still and wait.

“Let go—!” Hux screams, wrenching his arm, beating the claw hammer on the boards, scraping it through the crumbling timber. “You should’ve stayed _dead_! _You old, useless fucker—_!”

Sound ruptures and colour is deformed into a split rainbow covered in black-white sparks. Hux’s body rolls like a stone to the foot of an armchair. His skin burns with splinters and lines of cuts.

Across the room, the tidepool of shadow grows under the falling feathers. A man’s arm reaches from the split floorboards, partial in the dark room. Fingers skitter like woodlice, curling and twitching as the floor shudders with thuds. Hux squeezes his eyes and opens them again.

For a moment, the air is empty. The floor is only broken timber, splinters lying in the kitchen light.

 

 

Wheels rattle on flagstones, skittering on the overgrown grass and weeds. Voices come over squeaking and crinkling plastic.

“Is there anyone we should contact? His wife—?”

The silence blurs over Hux like the light passing in the bare oak branches.

“—No? I—I don’t know?” a watery voice mutters. “His mom’s dead for like fifteen years. His dad—He—”

“That’s fine.” The wheels skip over a border and scrape on the raised cracks of tarmac. “We’ll have to ask you to come with us to the hospital for see-oh exposure.”

“Uh? Yeah—Yeah, sure.”

The bolts of doors clatter as oiled metal clicks and slides. Hux watches the light shutter out into the ache of fluorescent bulbs. Plastic is scraping his chin and nose. His breathing is an unbearable wheeze and his arms aren’t responding. Hux tries to shake off the plastic clinging to his face.

“Hey—hey!” Hands cover Hux’s arm. “The hell are you doing, moron?”

Hux stares at the grey ceiling and jams his teeth into his lips as he turns. The green jacketed back of a paramedic is in front of the closing ambulance doors. The gravel skids under the moving wheels. Hands squeeze Hux’s arm between the straps of the stretcher. He has seen Ben cry, after being forgotten by his parents at school, during the movie credits, when he fell into a river gorge and dislocated his arm. But that has always been violent, full of snot and hiccups.

“Where are going to run now, huh?” Ben holds his breath on the last syllable, as though if his words are too harsh they will crack his flat glare and the snot and tears will come.

Hux’s fingers lock in fists as his jaw creaks. He inhales to speak but finds emptiness.

 

The thin mattress shudders and the metal frame squeaks when Hux coughs awake. He lifts his hand and tries to cover the sound of his hacking throat, but his palm meets rubber and plastic tubes that are shaking with the movements. The skin of his hands and arms feels raw with bandages.

“Can’t you go a moment without killing yourself?”

Hux peels his palm from the oxygen mask, fingers running the lines of the tubing on his throat. Instead of taking the chair within the perimeter of the drawn curtain around the hospital bed, Ben is sat on the edge of the mattress at Hux’s knees. Even in the green shadows, Hux sees the swollen red of his eyes and the bloated pout of his bitten lips.

Hux shows his teeth through the misted plastic. “I will, when you stop rubbing your nose in the wrong business, Ben,” he wheezes.

Ben sniffles and shifts up the hospital bed. Hux thinks he can smell, through the gaps of the oxygen mask, the moors on Ben’s clothes – a sweet odour, of the peat and stagnant water. Ben leans forward, his jacket hangs over them and his hand is on Hux’s at his throat.

“I heard you,” tells him Ben. His heavy murmur shakes Hux. “I heard you screaming, Armie. Was it your dad? Is that who you saw? They told me you’ve been hallucinating when the gas fucked up your head. Apparently, that’s what made you vomit and shit like that.”

Sweat rises over Hux’s tense body. Black edges on his eyes.

“You put him in the ground, you sly fuck.” Ben’s voice is a kiss on Hux’s ear, his eyes are almost loving. “I guess it was him or you, when you got rid of that old pig. But you almost got yourself fucked up too. The same way you got your dad. Never got those pipes fixed properly, did you? Mom heard it from Rae. Do you think it screwed her up too? I did think Rae went too early.”

Hux watches Ben lean away. His chest rises in heavy stutters under the thin hospital gown.

“Sounds like cosmic destiny. A guilt thing.” Ben squeezes his hand over Hux’s fist, warming the dry, cold skin of his scabbed knuckles. “I promise I won’t tell.” He smiles.

Hux twitches on the bed, bucking his chest and tensing his fist under Ben’s hand as though he means something by it. “ _Stop,_ ” he manages through the mask.

Ben’s cracked lips twitch a smile. His hand holds Hux’s as he leans across the bed. Like much of everything else that Hux doesn’t understand, the kiss on the edge of the oxygen mask is just as much of a puzzle. Ben’s breathing is a stain on the plastic as he leans away. Hux wants to feel the touch on his lips.

 

 

 

The cigarette is tapped off into the tortoise shell ashtray on the kitchen table. Hux shouldn’t be smoking, but Ben has given up on telling him ‘no’.  He breathes the smoke into the air, watching its shadows creep on the ceiling.

The water is running in the back garden below the window in tandem with the scratches of a brush. Ben is cleaning his hiking shoes. He had driven from the town this morning, leaving at five, and spent the day in the cold of the peaks. It started snowing at seven. Hux saw the snowflakes catching on the kitchen window when he came down to make coffee, uncoiling himself from the thick covers.

Hux pulled the blanket over his head when he sat on the step of the backdoor, watching the snow settle on the beds of the hyacinths. The hills beyond the garden gate were lost in the fog of the clouds, melting into a grey-purple murk.

When Ben came back, he sat beside Hux and took the cold mug from his hands, setting it behind them. He caught Hux’s fists in his palms with mud in the cracks of the lines and rubbed the chill out of his skin. They stayed like that, with Ben’s head on Hux’s shoulder, face slowly turning toward his neck, until the storm cleared to the grey clouds. Ben’s breath burned on Hux’s jaw like he was sleeping. He always comes back calmer from the moors, when he does not have the energy for emotions skipping, graining him into snapping.

“There isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t address with a professional,” Hux told him once.

Ben had shrugged. “I don’t need that. I manage.”

“If that is what you call it.”

The coffee stains the taste in Hux’s mouth, becoming pungent with the smoke. He coughs and listens to the brush scraping as he sits on a chair with his feet on the seat. Ben has made no plans to go back to America, made no calls with Leia on the other end. Or Han. They are both unmoving. Sat in the silence of winter, frozen grey with hands twisted together.

There is a thud on the window. Hux’s eyes flinch up to the glass. The brush has stopped scrubbing the sole of a boot.

There is a print of wings on the glass against the sky. Hux breathes in deep through the cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. He stands, the blanket tied around his shoulders and shaking arms, and goes to the garden.

The snow is thin on the patio, caught in the cracks of the flagstones. Ben has shut off the water of the pipe going into the hose. There is a blackbird on the ground, puffed out from the shock of the collision with the window. It limps from Ben’s hand when he touches it, but there is no coordination to the movements. The bird is twitching uselessly and it’s beginning to slow.

It doesn’t struggle again when Ben picks it up. He palms the creature, touching its puffed-out breast, pressing into the feathers. He reaches toward the throbbing neck, burrows down until he touches the skin and presses

Ben’s hair is covering his face, the spread of pink on his lips, his chin lost in the collar of his sweater. He presses onto the throat and the bird begins to wheeze, squeaking under his hands.

Hux watches him stroke the black feathers of the bird’s still chest. His lip is between his teeth. Gentle hands rock the bird’s head, fold the legs and brush down feathers. It’s only a black stone in Ben’s hands, like an egg due to hatch.

Hux wonders that, if the need comes, will Ben be as gentle with him. Will he put his hands on his throat and press, watch him turn red, blue. Make sure he is taken before _they_ take him. He is certain Ben will do it. Hux remembers Ben holding a baby bird in his childish hands, no hesitance before giving what was due best while Hux blubbered and cried.

Ben is stroking the blackbird’s head, perhaps unaware of Hux. He doesn’t disturb him. He is comforted by the thought of Ben taking his breath. At least, he will not die of age, lonely in a bed, stinking of his own weakness.

Cold prickles on Hux’s skin. He watches the air fog with snow as he takes a cigarette from the pocket of his sweatpants. The lighter scorches the end and Hux breathes out the smoke. Except it is stolen from the air by Ben’s lips that close over Hux’s mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
